I read the book referred to in Jonathan's message, "People of Vision: A
History of the American Council of the Blind." This was before Charlie
Crawford's resignation came to light and after the departure of Jonathan
Mosen. Therefore, Mr. Crawford's resignation came as a surprise to me. I
have heard speeches given by both him and ACB current President Chris Gray,
and they both seem very articulate. I may be mistaken about this, but it
seems that they both did/do a great job. I have given a great deal of
thought to joining ACB but I never seem to be able to make it to any
meetings. Now, however, I'm beginning to sort of regret the thought. To each
his own, but in my opinion there's just way too much bickering in both the
ACB and the NFB. I suppose I will give this some more thought.
Jacob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Pierce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 7:48 PM
Subject: Jonathan Mosen Explains Why He Left ACB Radio


In the past few years, one of the tremendous communications vehicles
available to the blind was ACB Radio.  The founding director was Jonathan
Mosen of New Zealand.  This summer, Jonathan resigned from ACB Radio and
took a job with adaptive technology vendor Pulse Data, needing to move
himself and his entire family to a completely different part of his
country.  He offered little explanation about what led to his resignation
of a job that at one time he found very personally rewarding and
humbling.

Following the abrupt resignation on Friday, October 17 of Charlie
Crawford, the Executive Director of the American Council of the Blind,
Jonathan today explains in his web log (some call these diaries blogs)
about why he left as director of ACB Radio.  The blog can be found at:

http://www.mosenexplosion.com

I copied today's entry below.  For purposes of clarification, the
midpoint exchange rate at the time this message is being composed is one
New Zealand Dollar = 0.595135 U.S. Dollars, according to:

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

Kelly





    Monday, October 20, 2003

    The Council in Crisis It was with a profound sense of sadness, but
not a bit of surprise, that I learned of the resignation of Charlie
Crawford as the Executive Director of the American Council of the Blind.
Charlie is a man of integrity, and I can only surmise how difficult it
has been for him to have been Executive Director during a time when the
ACB under present leadership has indulged in the practices that it
alleges in its recent book was the purpose of the Council being founded
in 1961.

    I have not communicated with Charlie since his resignation, but from
the brief statement Charlie has issued publicly on this matter, it would
appear that a gagging clause has been inserted into Charlie's settlement
package, essentially meaning that a sum of money has been paid on the
condition that Charlie keep his mouth shut on the specific issues
relating to his departure. One can only imagine the legal wrangling and
acrimony that must have led up to this parting of the ways between
Charlie and ACB. And given Charlie's strong commitment to transparency,
it must have been tough to accept these terms in order to give him and
his family a little security as he wanders into the uncertainty of
joblessness. Let no one blame him, his family must come first. Such a
gagging clause, I must say in fairness, is not uncommon when someone as
senior as Executive Director leaves an organization. The question is
however, is this appropriate in an organisation whose very reason for
being is to conduct advocacy on behalf of the blind in a highly
democratic, transparent, open manner. Or at least, that was the case
once.

    So it appears that Charlie will not be able to speak publicly about
what I can only imagine must have been the extraordinary heartbreak and
personal anguish he has experienced as he has seen constitutional abuse
after constitutional abuse practiced by the present leadership of the
Council. I however, as a much less significant player in the recent past
on the ACB scene, have no such gagging clause by which to be bound.

    Many people have asked me why I left ACB Radio. Indeed, this has
been the source of some speculation on the ACB-L list following
Charlie's resignation. Incidentally, although I sent my subscription
request to rejoin this list over 48 hours ago as I write this, my
request has not been approved. I understand that ACB now manually
approves each and every subscription to its list. I guess they just
forget to approve a few.

    Obviously I was offered a new position that I enjoy very much, but
people still want to know what was it that made me of a mind to accept.
I have only told a very small number of people about the real issues
surrounding my departure up until now, and until I heard of Charlie's
resignation and speculation about my own departure, I had no desire to
write my story down for a wider audience. Had I done so a few months
ago, it would have been with a deep sense of anger. Of course, there was
always the platform of ACB Radio to tell my story, but I can honestly
say I was never tempted to do this. Few people have the privilege of
getting behind a microphone and talking to a world wide audience, and to
use this position in an inappropriate way is just not my style.

    But the reason I am writing this piece now, on my own personal
Weblog where I share my thoughts with those who choose to read them,
three months to the day that I left, is because I met a lot of people in
ACB for whom I have immense personal admiration and respect. Some of
those people are paid staff who go well beyond the number of hours and
duties specified in their job descriptions. Others are hard working,
committed, passionate and thoughtful people who have volunteered for
years to advance what they believe in. Despite not being an American, I
have been a member at large of ACB and I have come to care about what
happens to the organisation. So my purpose in writing this piece is to
call upon members of the ACB to save their organisation, to rescue it
from the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of employing the same tactics it
criticises in other organisations.

    I need to be completely up front in my explanation of my departure
and say that finances were a significant factor. ACB Radio was of course
a seven day a week job in reality. One was always checking to make sure
systems were working and that everything was under control. Even when I
took a break over our summer, it was impossible to really let it go
completely. It wasn't until after I left that I truly realised what a
full-on job it was that never allowed one to relax completely. It was
also an incredibly rewarding, fun job. But fun doesn't feed a family.
When I started ACB Radio, one New Zealand dollar was worth about 42
American cents. This meant that it was possible for ACB to pay a pretty
meagre wage but make it liveable in a New Zealand context. I also had
other consultancy work to keep me going. However, as ACB Radio grew, it
was impossible to do anything else really, and ultimately I was paid a
full 40 hour week, of course in reality the work often took twice that
long. Even the production of a quality two hour Main Menu, with lots of
help from contributors, could have been a full-time job in itself.

    Over time, the exchange rate between the US and New Zealand took a
dramatic turn. The US dollar now buys around 60 New Zealand cents. Over
time that adds up to quite a pay cut. There were some on the ACB Board,
when this issue was brought to their attention, who said essentially
that it was tough, that I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to
be paid in US dollars. The issue is of course that at the time ACB Radio
started, it had no independent funding to speak of. However, it
ultimately grew to a level where it was receiving quite a lot of
sponsorship and the money did exist to compensate for the exchange rate
fluctuations despite the rest of ACB being in a fragile financial state.
They got a competent professional for much less than any American would
have accepted, but when the station became successful and money came in,
they weren't prepared to stop what became a significant pay cut. I
obviously felt that I was not treated as a valued employee.

    However, despite having to make economies, I probably would have
stuck with ACB Radio because I enjoyed it so much, if that had been the
only issue. But it wasn't. Not by any means. My primary motivation in
leaving was because of the frightening interference by the President of
ACB in ACB publications, in particular the Braille Forum. Many of you
will already know that the Braille Forum was originally called the
Braille Free Press. What a shame that name was never retained, for
perhaps the very use of that name would have guarded against the blatant
abuse of Presidential power that many of us have seen occurring.

    I'd like to site some specific examples. The issue of the Iowa guide
dog complaint and the way ACB chose to deal with it was the topic of
considerable public debate. In an organisation which has a "free press",
clearly a topical issue is going to receive considerable exposure. Yet
rigorous attempts were made to water down a question for the acb.org
Candidates' Pages on the Iowa complaint. I must make it clear that the
President was not the only person party to this, in many of these
situations he was fully supported by Ralph Sanders as Chairman of the
ACB Public Relations Committee. Ralph felt that the Iowa complaint
should not be raised directly because it would "create division among
the membership". Hmmm, might that have been said about publishing
material from the McDaniel faction by the NFB in the late 1950s perhaps?

    People in politics who don't like the fact that they have misread
the tide of public opinion will frequently shoot the messenger, IE the
media. A sustained attack on the integrity of the Editor of the Braille
Forum was orchestrated, based on the premise that the Editor had an
"anti-Gray agenda." We all make mistakes, and I've no doubt some have
been made by the Editor of the Forum, however no employee deserves to be
subjected to a constant barrage of intimidation and harassment on a
regular basis regarding articles and letters to the editor. The
President chose to make a big deal out of the number of letters to the
editor printed in the Forum on the Iowa issue. Not only was he concerned
about the space they were taking up, but also about the fact that they
were very much tilted in favour of GDUI and against the Board's
position. The trouble is, you can only publish what you've got. And the
reality is that hardly anyone was writing in to support the Board's
position. If they did, the letter was published. It is standard practice
in a letters to the editor column to publish a mix of contributions that
reflect the balance of opinion. On an issue so topical, the Forum, as
long as it's run by a competent journalist, is going to allow expression
by members in a democratic organisation on the issues of the day. But
the President, and a number of members of the Board of Publications,
sought to shut that dialogue down. They claimed the letter writers
didn't understand, didn't have the full facts, a theme that kept coming
up when anyone wrote in to criticise the leadership.

    Another issue was of course the letter written by an articulate and
thoughtful ACB member, seeking to express concern about People of Vision
not being published in all formats simultaneously. This was, once again,
a hot topic, and the author put the matter forcefully but eloquently.
Chris Gray, in an e-mail to the editor of the Forum, "formally
requested" that the letter not be published. He gave five reasons for
this "request". 1 Not even the print version of the history was yet
available, so discussion of accessible versions at that moment was
putting the cart before the horse.

    2 The proposed letter was written without full knowledge of the
facts. To use this to promote a political agenda was, he said,
inappropriate at best.

    3 No decision could have been made about accessibility issues until
ACB had information regarding cost, time of availability and so on.

    4 There is no purpose served in the magazine of the American Council
of the Blind criticizing the holding of a history gala in Pittsburgh.

    5 The appearance of controversy on ACB's Listserve is hardly grounds
for the inclusion of an article or letter in the Braille Forum.

    Those were Chris's five reasons as to why the Editor not publish the
letter. If you read and analyse each reason carefully, you'll see how
spurious each of them is. Ultimately, the show-down was avoided when the
writer withdrew the letter after discussions with, among others, the
President himself. So here we have a situation where the Editor of the
publication once called the Braille Free Press is told not to publish a
reflection by a member of genuine concern about an organisational
decision. What's really concerning about this is that the person who
must ultimately take responsibility for the decision being complained
about was the same person intimidating the Editor into not publishing.
And that's precisely what the ACB was established to stop and why the
Board of Publications was created. Surely in a democratic organisation,
the answer would have been to give the President a right of reply.

    There is another aspect of this issue that should not go unremarked
upon. The way the President is conducting the affairs of ACB is
completely anathema to modern principles of governance theory. Good
governance practices are quite clear. If you have an Executive Director
who employs staff, the President and Board holds the Executive Director
to account for the performance of the National Office. It is
inappropriate, say all the governance experts, for the President and
Board to try and give instructions directly to staff members. The
Executive Director manages their performance, and the President and
Board manages the performance of the Executive Director. Perhaps,
ultimately, that is now what they've done. Perhaps the Executive
Director simply wasn't prepared to operate under this kind of regime any
more, and I don't blame him.

    Rather than stand up and defend the rights of the once great Braille
Forum, the Board of Publications instead elected to set up a committee
to oversee the Forum. It included a system where this committee would
see and approve the entire table of contents for each issue. The Board
of Publications had caved in to dictatorship. This didn't surprised me,
because at one Board of Publications meeting when the subject of
inappropriate Presidential interference was being discussed, the
Chairman of the Board of Publications said that because he was the
Presidential appointee on the Committee, his role was to serve the
President. I told him, in some shock, that actually his role, like the
rest of us, was to serve the Constitution. Things really had got to a
sorry state.

    As a journalist who values freedom of the press, as someone who had
the vision that although ACB Radio was funded by ACB, it could be the
BBC of the blind community, as someone who genuinely admires past
leaders of the ACB, it was an impossible situation for me. Despite the
fact that I myself did not appear to be in the firing line, apart from a
few pathetic and typically barbed comments by the Chairman of the Public
Relations Committee, I felt that it was only a matter of time before the
gang closed in on ACB Radio's journalistic freedom. And indeed I started
to find myself more reticent about bringing up the topical issues as
they affected ACB. I felt my confidence waning. I was upset, sad and
disgusted. It was time to go.

    Having announced my resignation, I actively encouraged Steve
Speicher to run for President. Steve is a nice guy, but I was
disappointed with the campaign. He left his run way too late, and was
not direct enough about the Constitutional crisis facing the
organisation. I did my best to remain professional to the end of my ACB
Radio time, despite considerable emotional stress.

    I would like to take this opportunity to thank the National office
staff for their gift to me at the Pittsburgh Convention. Several people
remarked to me how odd it was that Chris Gray never made one mention at
Convention of the fact that I was leaving and of my contribution. I'll
leave you to figure it out.

    So what is to be done? Well, a number of things, but I think there
is one important first step that must occur. Just as those brave souls
did prior to the ACB being formed, it is time for an alternative
publication to be launched, a publication that is free from Presidential

censorship. What better name for it than the Braille Free Press. And of
course, today's truth-sayers have a tool at their disposal that the
founders of the ACB could never have dreamed of, the Internet. Let some
brave soul begin a Braille Free Press web site, that professionally and
in a scholarly way tells the truth about what is happening. Because if I
can relate to you the information I just have, others know much more.

    In closing, I would like to make a few points which are obvious to
me, but in past experience I think will not be obvious to all. I do not
personally dislike Chris Gray. I doubt that he'd want to after this
post, but I would have no hesitation in having a beer with Chris. We've
debated these issues one to one privately and he knows that I have a
very different view from him in terms of Presidential involvement in
publications. Chris has been very supportive of ACB Radio at critical
times during its history, and he deserves plenty of credit and thanks
for that. However, I strongly, emphatically and passionately believe
with all my heart that his style of leadership is slowly killing the
American Council of the Blind. It is not pretty watching a good friend
die, but perhaps it's not too late to breathe new life into the ailing
body?


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VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
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http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html